Jennings and Darbishire

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Buckeridge’s style tends towards the farcical, but his books are laugh-out-loud funny – when reading these to myself I had to break off frequently and read the choicer passages aloud to my husband! You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Young boys say and do the most unexpected things – like constructing the leaning tower of Pisa from the contents of their pencil cases – and their capacity for mimicry, awarding nicknames, and ridiculously obvious practical jokes knows no bounds.

The two friends are able, at length, to persuade the headmaster to rescind the ban on hut-building, and inadvertently show the daughter-in-law of a distinguished Old Boy, General Merridew, that the school is just the right place to send her young son. I am not sure if boys from nowadays will feel the same as certain things are a bit out of date, there is no mobile or DS in sight, but it is sure funny! But things can only go horribly wrong for Jennings when he is put in charge of Elmer, the treasured goldfish, and even worse when the Headmaster pays the squatters a visit. Soon after that, the butter that he's carrying in his blazer pocket (his contribution to the aforementioned 'At Home' event) melts during a maths coaching session with Old Wilkie - much to the latter's fury. Her predecessor, who features most prominently in 'Jennings Goes To School', is also kind-hearted, but less popular with the boys, as she is rather more brisk and no-nonsense in her approach and has, in Buckeridge's words, 'little sympathy with junk-filled pockets and hair that will not stay parted'.At this point children’s books were still wholesome and pure, staying right away from difficult issues like divorce or sexuality. I once read a comparison of the Jennings series with the William books by Richmal Crompton, which were mainly written in the 1920s and 1930s, and about boys of a similar age; it said that the Jennings stories were somewhat limited in scope as there was less for Jennings to rebel against (really only Mr Wilkins, the sterner of the masters), whereas William was rebelling against everything and everyone. Minor issues present such as mild cracking, inscriptions, inserts, light foxing, tanning and thumb marking. Under the patronage of Miss Thorpe, Linbury is going green - collecting of rubbish, recycling, distribution of leaflets to raise awareness. Lieutenant General Sir Melville Merridew DSO MC Bart – retired general, the school's most distinguished alumnus, and frequent bestower of half-holidays.

E. Johns; there’s no need for the silent surgery I have seen in one 1912 children’s classic in which a black horse that once had a six-letter name starting with “N” has now been renamed “Ebony. I enjoyed them at the time, though from what I remember and as you indicate, they are very, very gentle.But when their dreadful French ends in the unwelcome gift of a parcel of raw fish, the worse place they could hide it is in Mr Wilkins chimney! In Jennings’ Little Hut, the headmaster decides that the huts near the pond in the school grounds which the boys have constructed with diligence and care, are unsafe; as a result Jennings and Darbishire are in rather bad odour with their schoolmates.

Based on the 1950 novel by Anthony Buckeridge, Jennings At School had already been produced as a radio series for Children’s Hour on the BBC Home Service (with future Top Gear host Jeremey Clarkson voicing the character of Atkinson in some episodes! Blyton also has a couple of male teachers at her schools but there are no female teachers in Jennings, where the only regularly recurring female character is Matron who, as with the matrons in the Blyton stories, is unnamed. I probably don’t find him as exciting as eleven-year-old me did as I have done more exciting things during my own life! Mind you, it did make me look up an English flapjack recipe and make some, but how could even a ten-year-old boy eat a plate of super-heavy solid-rolled-oat-and-sugar squares? The earlier novels including Jennings Goes to School present an idealised version of small town, middle-class English life in the 1950s and mid-1960s which is the period I went to school in Tunbridge Wells, so a lot of the environment was what I considered ‘normal’.Like Blyton’s school stories, the Jennings books are not adventures in the sense of the Famous Five or Adventure series, although very occasionally in both there are adventurous episodes. Jennings founds the Linbury Court Detective Agency, tracks a suspected burglar to his thieves' kitchen, sees mysterious lights in the sanatorium, and solves the burglary of the trophies from the library on Sports Day.